


Moment by Moment

by flugantamuso



Category: Weiss Kreuz
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-11
Updated: 2010-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-06 03:34:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flugantamuso/pseuds/flugantamuso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being stranded is a learning experience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moment by Moment

5 Minutes

His hands were scrabbling at the sand a few inches beneath him, but he couldn’t find the strength to turn himself over. He drifted, eyes closed, hands gradually releasing. There was a burning sensation in his chest that consumed all his energy.

Then something gripped him from the back and inch by inch turned him onto his side, then released him. His head struck wet sand, his nose half buried. He had time to take one half stuttered breath before water came rushing over his face, choking him. He coughed frantically, and weakly turned his face upward, freeing his nose to take deep, stinging breaths of air. The water receded, and came back, entered his ears, rising to his hairline, but not to his nose, not to his mouth. He felt cold, and uncomfortable.

There was something warmer than sand to the left side of his head, but less malleable. He heard a ragged gasping sound above him.

He drifted.  


5 Hours

He was aware of the pain before he was aware of anything else. A steady beat against his head. He opened his eyes to a blinding whiteness, closed them, and then decided that darkness made it worse, and opened them again. The sand under him was dry and hot. Soft, finely ground grains of white sand clung to his hands where he saw them lying motionless on the ground.

Experimentally he tried to move his fingers.

Nothing.

He focused in on one finger and managed to produce a twitch. It sent tiny shock waves rippling up his arm, but they ended before they reached his shoulder. He tried it again and got a longer twitch, though his arm still looked and felt like something in the last stages of life before death. He narrowed his eyes at his fingers, but this caused a fresh spasm of pain in his head. He gasped, closed his eyes, and for a moment forgot about his hand. He rode out the pain, letting out panting breaths, and it finally passed.

The sand shifted next to his head and he opened his eyes to see Crawford’s face directly above him.

His reaction was instantaneous and painful. He swung his arms down to his sides and pushed himself to his feet. Or at least, he tried to, but the first step produced a stinging frisson of pain that travelled from his arms to his chest to his head and left him hissing even as he continued his struggle to get up and fight.

Crawford gave an amused snort and was suddenly much closer, his elbows resting on his knees, face directly above Aya’s. "There isn’t much point, Abyssinian, we’re all alone here. As satisfying as it would be to kill each other, in the long run it would be detrimental to our survival."

Aya tried to punch him, but his arms were still weak and tingly. Crawford didn’t even have to pull away to avoid the blow.

He stood up. "I’ll leave you to think it over."

Aya managed to turn over onto his side in time to watch Crawford walk away. The man was barefoot, and his pants were torn, and ….. he hadn’t been wearing glasses.

Aya frowned and stumbled to his feet. He stood, swaying and confused, testing the strength of his legs and finding it wanting. Around him there was sand, and rock, an endless stretch of blue water, scraggly, brownish grass, melting into a lush green jungle of low trees with large, rubbery leaves.

Crawford turned to look at him and raised his eyebrows questioningly.

Aya snarled at him wordlessly and turned away from the sand, the blinding light reflected off the water, and plunged into the jungle.

He only got a few steps before his legs gave way, sending him crashing to the ground. For the moment he lay motionless, his breath stirring the earth, then he pushed himself up and staggered off, feeling greater strength in his legs with every step.  


5 Days

Aya hated mosquitos. Also trees, dirt, sand and salt water. He longed for the concrete jungles of Tokyo, the restaurants, subways, glass windows, drinking fountains. Radio stations, newspapers, books. Aya had never been a great reader, but now he longed for the printed word.

He was hot and sticky all the time, and he _itched_. He felt miserable, and his only consolation was that Crawford assuredly felt worse. The man lay in the shade with his forearm over his eyes, suffering silently.

Aya was tempted to take advantage of the situation by bashing him over the head with a rock. It would certainly make _him_ feel better, but as Crawford had pointed out, if they were going to be here for a while, then they’d need to help each other in order to survive.

So he controlled his murderous impulses and explored the coastline, hoping to find a dock, or better, a boat. He fantasized about leaving Crawford on the island while he was picked up by a fisherman and taken back to Japan.

It wouldn’t happen, of course. Crawford had made it quite clear that he would ‘see’ anyone coming before they came, and no one was coming soon.

Nonetheless, Aya searched.

The island was small, less than six miles long on the coastline. He and Crawford had been lucky to wash up on one of the only sandy parts of the coast. Almost anywhere else and they would have been dashed against the rocks. They were also lucky that the island had no less than three springs, one that they had discovered the first day, and two more that he found trickling down to the coast.

He returned to the place where they’d washed up, hoping that some wild beast had dragged Crawford off to devour him. No such luck.

He walked over to the tree and prodded him with a toe, eliciting an obscenity and two slitted eyes glaring up at him. "Are you sure you're not going to die?" God, he could only hope so.

"_No_," said Crawford, gritting his teeth, "I am only suffering pressure headaches caused by the loss of my glasses and the brightness of the sunlight on the water. They will pass."

"Pity." Aya leaned against a nearby tree, suppressing his instinctive desire to rub his itchy back against the bark like a bear with hives. He would go tend his hurts in private, but first he needed a question answered, something he’d been thinking about for days. But before he could say anything, Crawford spoke, covering his eyes again and drawing his knees up so that his feet were planted flat in the sand.

"It was the best of a set of bad choices."

"What?" Aya surrepticiously rubbed his hands together, red bump against red bump.

"You were wondering why I let this happen, why I didn’t ‘see’ it, and avoid it."

"So you did see it coming."

"Yes." Crawford was silent.

Aya thought about it. Perhaps in the other choices Crawford had died. Perhaps he’d been trapped with Farfarello, no straightjacket in sight.

It was disturbing to be the best choice.

He left Crawford then to seek out a mud patch that he could wallow in. Perhaps if he caked himself heavily enough the itching would cease to bother him.  


5 Weeks

More of the hut was visible every time Aya returned to it with piles of grass. Bit by bit Crawford was laying poles, filling in the gaps with mud and grass. He was filthy, mud-streaked and sweaty, and his hair was a snarled mess around his ears and in his eyes, very different from Aya’s sleek straight hair tied back with a braided strap at the base of his head.

When this was done they would have a solid structure to rest in at night, a structure that would protect them from the night winds and the occasional rains. But Aya was uncomfortable about the close proximity that he and Crawford would be in when they used the hut. He’d gotten used to Crawford’s presence every day, but sleeping across from the man was something else entirely. Not to mention the heavy-lidded looks that Crawford had been sending him, the unnerving predatory expression that he wore more often than not. No, the hut was not safe, not at all.  


5 Months

They weren’t prepared for the rains. Crawford warned Aya that it was coming, and together they worked to waterproof the hut with the gum of nearby trees. They packed the cracks with leaves and the edges with wet sand. They set aside a store of fruit that Aya had dried in the sun, and nuts found on the far side of the island.

Despite these precautions, the thatch leaked and made them both wet and miserable. Aya responded to the situation by hacking off his hair with a sharp rock, in the same fashion that Crawford had done a few weeks ago. Crawford responded to it by increasing his advances on Aya. It was a very trying period. Several times Aya came close to attacking Crawford, and only the certainty that the man would find some way of making the encounter sexual made him hesitate.

For the first few days they stayed on their beds on either side of the hut.

‘Beds’ was a loose term for the woven mats that Crawford had come up with after their first few months on the island. Aya had looked with skepticism at the pile of weavings that Crawford was making, uncertain that the effort would yield a useable result. Did he really want to sleep on that?

Crawford leered at him. "Well, if you don’t want to make your own, then you could always share mine."

Aya made his own bed.

The end result was that they slept on piles of ferns and leaves covered with woven mats.

On the third day of the rains, water seeped through at the base of the hut and soaked the leaves. Aya threw them out while Crawford shook out the mats.

"Don’t think that I don’t know that you knew that this would happen," said Aya darkly that night as they lay back to back in the center of the hut.

Crawford merely chuckled and moved a little closer.

Aya scowled, but it was difficult to remain angry when he was warmer than he’d been in days.  


5 Years

The pig had put up a good fight, which would sweeten the meat. Aya split the skull and checked the brain for madness. Usually, it wouldn’t be a concern, but a few weeks ago he had seen a monkey violently attack its fellows. As it bit and clawed each monkey turned violent in turn, until finally the whole group had torn themselves to bits. The pig had not acted oddly, but they could not afford to take chances.

The brain looked normal, gelatinous lines of pink and white with no sign of black. Good.

It took over an hour to drag it back to the hut, and when he got there he was sweating and dirty. He took a quick dip in the ocean to wash off, quick because even after five years prolonged exposure to the sun would leave him sick for a day and burned for weeks.

The first time it had happened he suffered in silence. The second time, he let Crawford rub soothing, sticky sap all over his skin while he tried to keep his stomach from turning over. After that he avoided the sun assiduously, as much to keep Crawford’s hands off of him as not to burn.

Lately Crawford had been looking rather appealing, something that Aya chalked up to too much coconut wine. He’d taken to spending time hunting deep in the jungle. Usually he returned empty handed, and Crawford would silently greet him with a cup of wine and bowl of fruit.

Not tonight, though. Tonight they would eat sizzling pig meat, and cut the remainder into strips to be smoked. Crawford would do the smoking, his tanned skin smeared with charcoal and shiny with sweat.

Most likely he would remove his shirt.

Aya would disappear for the day. At least, that was what he had done in the past. Perhaps not today.

When he returned to the hut, Crawford was already hard at work stripping the skin. He paused to eye Aya’s wet body.

Aya snorted and dropped down to help. He’d grown used to Crawford’s lasciviciousness

At first he’d thought that Crawford would let up when it became apparent that Aya would not respond. He didn’t. Then he wondered if Crawford’s persistence meant that he’d ‘seen’ that Aya would eventually give in. He eventually gave up that line of thought as futile, though it still haunted him occasionally. Perhaps Crawford merely wished to annoy Aya, though he had long since ceased to be truly annoyed.

They worked in silence until there was a large pile of cut meat. Aya started the fire while Crawford continued to work on the pig, eyes squinted in concentration, arms bloody to the elbow.

Aya considered him.

The Crawford that he had known before would never have allowed a speck of blood to touch his white suit, despite the fact that there was more blood on his hands then than there was now. He would not have skinned a pig, and he would not have tried to seduce Aya. He had changed, living here had changed him. Aya did not like to consider how much it had changed _himself._

The meat was sending a smoky, tantalizing smell into the air as it cooked. Aya watched it carefully. They could not afford for any of it to burn.

Crawford went to rinse in the ocean, and Aya wrapped the uncooked strips of meat in bananna leaves and took out the wooden bowls that Crawford had painstakingly carved out and rubbed with limestone until they were as sooth and satiny as mother of pearl. He heaped the meat in one bowl and put chunks of pinneaple in the other, carefully wiping his hands down on the grass first.

Their first shared meals had been only fruit, and Crawford had let the juice drip down his chin, wiping it off with his hand and slowly, challengingly, licking his hand and finally drawing a finger all the way into his mouth. Aya had walked out in disgust and they hadn’t shared a meal again for a week. Aya suspected that Crawford would have continued the practice if he had not become as heartily sick of fruit as Aya was.

Most of the fruits on the island grew year round. Pinneaple was one of the few exceptions, and it had just come into season. Aya’s mouth watered as he prepared it, not because he particularly liked pinneaple. By the end of the pinneaple season he would loath it, but tonight, with pinneaple and pig, he and Crawford would eat like kings.

He was just squeezing some pinneaple pieces over the meat when Crawford returned and dropped down across from him. His arms were wet, and apparently he’d dipped his head as well, because his hair was flat and wet. Little streams of water ran from his temples to the hollow at the base of his throat, where they pooled and overflowed, finally disappearing under his shirt.

Aya looked away.

They ate without ceremony in the gathering dusk. Aya wished that they would eat side by side so that he would not have to watch Crawford lick his fingers, though he was not doing it provocatively. That excuse was no longer available. Five years ago Crawford could have done a stiptease in front of him, and Aya would have felt no interest whatsoever. Now he was innocently eating, and Aya could not tear his eyes away.

Crawford saw him watching and smirked, setting aside his bowl. Aya tensed, but he only raised an eyebrow and stood up. "There’s something that I want to show you."

Aya continued to eat. "What?"

"Something remarkable."

That got his attention.

They rarely talked. There was very little to talk about except the past, and by unspoken agreement neither of them brought that up. Much of what they communicated to each other was done using body language.

Usually the lack of speech didn’t bother Aya. He had been a solitary creature before he had been trapped here, and living with Crawford hadn’t changed that. Once in a while, when he missed human contact, he would seek out the other man and they would talk, but usually it took only a few sentences for him to remember why he and Crawford didn’t talk to each other. They didn’t have compatible personalities for conversation, and there were few topics that they were both willing to make an effort to discuss. Situations like this, where Crawford tried to talk to him, were more common than when he tried to talk to Crawford, but no less uncomfortable.

The conversations that they had were usually about the weather, the land, food, the various projects that Crawford was working on, Aya’s struggling garden. Nothing about any of this was remarkable.

Aya set aside his bowl and followed Crawford.

They walked to the beach and past the bathing pool, past the signal pyre that Aya had built and Crawford forbidden him to light.

"There won’t be any boats to see it."

"Why didn’t you tell me that _before I built it_?" said Aya, frustrated and tired after three days of hard work.

"I didn’t say that there would never be any boats," said Crawford enigmatically, and that was the end of that conversation.

They walked and came to a silvery beach, one of the two true beaches on the island, and one that Aya rarely visited. Here Crawford stopped and looked out at the water.

Aya looked too, and eventually he saw a movement that was not the waves. There was something crawling up the beach, more than one something actually. He stepped forward to get a closer look and stumbled as his foot sank into loose, moist sand. He looked down, startled, and saw the front end of a turtle working industriously, if slowly, backwards into the sand. Crawford was chuckling behind him. All of the moving shapes were turtles, all moving up the beach, digging and leaving long rounded furrows in the sand.

"They’re laying eggs," said Crawford, crouching down to get a better look at the turtle that Aya had nearly stepped on.

"that’ll be tasty," said Aya, not thinking.

Crawford made a querelous noise below him.

"Not _all _of them," Aya amended.

Crawford snorted and patted the sand beside him. "Sit down."

"Why?" said Aya suspiciously.

"Because you’ll never have another chance to see this."

"What are you talking about, they probably do it every—" He broke off abruptly and looked at Crawford in surprise. "What have you ‘seen,’" he demanded, "will we _be _here next year?"

There was a moment of silence before Crawford spoke, the only sound the waves washing up and down the beach. "In two weeks, " he said, "you light the pyre."

Aya’s legs gave way under him and he sat on the sand next to Crawford, looking out at the ocean.

Two weeks. Two weeks and he would return to real life, a life of prepackaged food and clothing that wasn’t worn thin with age and use, of practice with an actual blade, and killing, and flowers grown in a greenhouse. A life with friends, a life without Crawford.

It was a dizzying prospect.

He shivered and wrapped his arms around his knees. Home.

There was a touch at his jaw and hands turned his head, pressing lightly into his skin, gritty with sand. Crawford’s eyes were dark and deepset. Moonlight flickered in white specks at the edges. He waited until Aya had fully met his eyes, and then leaned slowly forward, moving into Aya’s personal space.

Time seemed to slow and Aya looked from Crawford’s eyes to his lips and knew that he should pull away, but he didn’t. He moved forward on his knees and met Crawford’s lips with his own. It was a gentle bump at first, close-lipped and tentative. Then Crawford’s fingers tightened on Aya’s face and he opened his lips, and things became fast and sloppy.

Aya settled his hands on Crawford’s legs and felt muscles tighten and ripple under his fingers. Crawford broke away and mouthed his way down Aya’s throat. It made his skin tingle, and it wasn’t nearly enough. He moved his hands to Crawford’s shoulders and slid his legs over Crawford’s thighs, settling on his lap. Crawford groaned as Aya’s movement bumped their groins together, and Aya followed with a hiss. His entire body throbbed with heat and desire. Crawford’s breath came harsh and fast against Aya’s collarbone, his hair gleamed where Aya peppered it with kisses. He seemed utterly desirable.

Crawford was moving steadily downward, and it so excited Aya that he slid forward and dug his knees into the ground, sitting straight up. Crawford’s elbows fell back to support him, and then gave way altogether, and he fell backwards onto his back, with Aya straddling his chest, hands on the ground above his shoulders. For a moment they held position, motionless, and then Aya bent down for a kiss. His long red hair feathered Crawford’s face and brushed over his open, wet mouth, catching between their lips as they kissed.

Crawford gave a muffled chuckle and Aya stood up, stepping to the side and offered his hand. Crawford grasped it, and swung himself up, stealing a kiss at the peak.

They walked back to the hut in silence, comfortable as they never would have been in speech. They stopped now and again to embrace and rub up against each other. Aya felt lightheaded, and half like laughing, because there could be nothing more ridiculous for either of them than to be doing this with one another, in this manner. But he had committed himself to it back on the beach, and he did not regret it. He could only move as his body dictated he should, as Crawford’s need urged him to do.

At the hut they broke apart. Crawford began to dig a hole and Aya fetched the wrapped pig strips. No coupling would justify wasting such a valuable resource. Afterwards they went to the bathing pool and washed each other off. It was incredibly liberating to allow himself to touch what he had wanted to touch for months, perhaps years. They bumped against each other, the water moving fluidly over their cocks, and Crawford reached for him. Aya caught the hand before it could grab his erection and brought it slowly to his lips, kissing the rough skin of the palm, all the while keeping his eyes on Crawford’s face. It was calm, but Aya could feel Crawford’s excitement twitch against his leg.

Crawford tugged him out of the pool and they went, naked, back to the hut. Their beds, shoved up against the opposite sides of the hut, were too small for them both, so they spent a few minutes shoved them to one side, avoiding the fire pit in the center. Aya didn’t mind. His arousal was a pleasant flame in the pit of his stomach, not yet overwhelming.

When the beds were finally together Crawford toppled Aya onto them, coming down on top of him, hands at either side of Aya’s waist. He was heavy and pleasantly damp. Aya threw back his head and bucked against him, fingers burying themselves in his ragged black hair. Through pale moonlight at the doorway he saw the flash of Crawford’s eyes, and then only the faint shape of his head as he moved downward, tongue mapping Aya’s chest, stomach, navel, hips and thighs. Aya sighed and hissed and occasionally yelped as Crawford found sensitive spots. He ran his hands continuously through Crawford’s hair and over his shoulders, loosening and tightening by degree. And then Crawford took Aya’s cock into his _mouth _, and with a smooth glide Aya was buried in his throat.

Crawford drew back until only the tip was in his mouth and sucked strongly, looking at Aya’s face. Aya looked back, breathing uneven, hands twitching uselessly at his sides where they had fallen when Crawford had taken him in.

An exploratory finger made its way to his backside, and he bucked away from it, further into Crawford’s mouth. He felt its length, slippery with coconut oil, as it dug into him. It was an odd sensation, but Aya quashed any hesitations and ruthlessly pushed back, impaling himself.

Crawford hummed his approval around the head of Aya’s cock, and that was enough to make him momentarily forget the finger. Then he added another, and simultaneously opened his mouth wide. Aya took it as an invitation and thrust in to the root. Crawford breathed hard through his nose, a snorting sound, and brushed his fingers inside Aya caressingly. Then he pulled completely off and smirked, a twitch of movement in the dark.

Aya lunged for him, pushing himself up with both hands and, throwing himself enthusiastically down on Crawford. It was rather awkward, because doing anything fast and athletic with a raging erection is awkward, and when Aya pushed Crawford down, his stomach met up with one of Crawford’s knees, and Crawford’s head met up with the hut’s floor. Luckily, neither of them wished to complain, and with a bit of management, Aya was perched on top of Crawford, grinding his ass down into the hardness beneath it, and straining his eyes to see Crawford’s changing expressions.

He reached behind him and grasped the base of Crawford’s cock, held it straight, and slid backwards and up to hover above it. He held this position, stroking his own cock and taking deep breaths for several moments before arching his back and sliding down.

He missed Crawford’s cock, or perhaps it missed him, sliding into the groove where his thigh met his hip. It was certainly a testament to how badly Crawford wanted this that he didn’t laugh, only gave a high pitched whine. Aya lifted himself up again and glared down at the offending organ, willing it to stay put, and slid down again, more slowly this time.

He achieved penetration, all of two inches of it, before his body tightened around the intruder, halting its progress. Aya closed his eyes and attempted to slow his breathing, feeling Crawford’s hands moving soothingly on his chest, down his arms to his hands, where they drew him forward until he was angled towards Crawford’s face, straining to keep his lower half upright. And then Crawford lifted up and gave a twist of his powerful hips and he was suddenly buried in Aya. It hurt, a lot. Aya instinctively clamped his knees down and _squeezed_.

Crawford cursed and released Aya’s hands, scrabbling at him rakingly, arching his neck back until his throat was a bow with a bump where the moonlight struck his adam’s apple. When Aya released his squeeze he immediately felt better, and Crawford began to move, snapping up and then pulling down, murmuring as he did so, first soft, then dark and compelling. On the third thrust Aya met him on the downstroke and a surge of pleasure raced through him so strongly that he had to clench his teeth against a scream. He did it again and again, keeping the rhythm until Crawford grew wild, too fast and broken to match pace with.

He called out Aya’s name as he came, but it was his codename, and Aya was not sure whether he should be pleased or displeased. He shifted uncomfortably, making wet, sticky sounds, and took himself in hand with long, sure strokes. He was close when Crawford recovered enough to help him, and they finished him off quietly, a sigh of relief from both of them as he came.

Afterwards Aya rolled off and they lay side by side on the beds. Aya was not quite comfortable; his back end felt squishy, and now that his lust was sated he felt disquieted lying next to Crawford rather than across the hut from him. But he was too relaxed to go back to the bathing pool, and they could move the beds back the next day. He turned his back to Crawford and emptied his mind, gradually falling asleep.


End file.
